


hate of some other man's beliefs

by gearyoak



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Torture, Past Child Abuse, but instead of calling he just beats the shit out of you, excessive italics that fucked up my formatting, john is like that very persistent salesman that calls you everyday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 21:48:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15276894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gearyoak/pseuds/gearyoak
Summary: Nick sent John's plane hurtling toward the earth, and Rook followed it down. He met the Seed with the other's gun aimed at his chest, but Rook acted quicker.This is what happened after.





	hate of some other man's beliefs

**Author's Note:**

> there isn't enough john/male dep. there's a lot, but it's not enough.
> 
> title is from hozier's foreigner's god

Fields of Holland Valley rolled passed, the truck going fast enough to blur them together so  they were more like smudges of browns and greens. Rook wasn’t planning on slowing down, not until the roads were barred by trees thick enough no one would be able to see them from the sky.

His radio crackled from its place in the center console and Mary May’s voice filtered through the static.

“ _Dep, I - please, just, if you can hear me - answer as soon as you can. If no one hears from you by tomorrow morning, we - we’ll just - “_ The shaky breath she released into the speakers sounded more like popping bubble wrap than it did a sigh, but Rook knew it too well to mistake it for anything else. “ _Please, just get back here._ ”

He didn’t like lying to her. Even if it wasn’t exactly lying, the remorse crawled from his chest and into hands, curling his fingers around the steering wheel tighter. It was for the best, though, Rook had to keep reminding himself that.

He pried a hand off the wheel, reached for the radio, and shut it off. John Seed watched the movement, but didn’t say a word.

He’d been like that for well over twenty minutes; silent. It was a drastic difference from when Rook had first shoved him into the passenger seat, when he’d been hissing every curse from under the sun, struggling even though his arms were held behind him, bound by a complicated knot Rook had made from John’s own dumb fucking coat. The way his head lolled back and forth probably wasn’t a good sign, Rook decided. How John had been fighting and resisting before almost made Rook forget he had fallen a few hundred feet from the sky.

While there were a lot of things people could say about the youngest Seed sibling - a good amount no one would be able to argue against - being a bad pilot was not one of them. With the way Nick had knocked him, the plane should have dropped like a rock, but John had managed.

Still, he’d hit the ground _hard_. Rook wasn’t about to risk everything by driving a Seed to safety only to have him die to a concussion he couldn’t wake up from.

“You’re awfully quiet over there.” He looked away from the road for a second to make sure John could hear him. Sure enough, he was met with the other’s gaze, burning with exhausted rage. It made Rook grin. “Only so many ways you can tell someone you’re gonna carve their skin off, huh? I get that.”

John rolled his eyes - honest to god rolled his eyes - and kept them focused on the sky, like he’d rather burn his retinas from the setting sun rather than look at Rook. He still didn’t say a single thing.

“Seriously.” Rook turned his attention back to the road but kept the grin on his face because he knew it would irritate the other to see it. “What happened to the guy who could never keep his fuckin’ mouth shut, huh? Loved hearin’ himself talk? Couldn’t get through a night without you barking your shit in my ear and now you’ve finally got nothing to say?”

John remained quiet and when Rook spared him another brief look, he was still squinting up at the sky. Rook resisted the urge to knock the sunglasses that were still miraculously perched on his head down and over his eyes, just to be a nuisance; harder for John to ignore. He didn’t, afraid to find out if they actually _could_ move from there or not.

Rook blinked and refocused his vision, remembering to return back to the task of driving.

“Why am I here?” John’s voice was quiet, most likely on account of the wheezing, rattling noise his chest made every so often.

Rook weighed his chances of getting the medical clinic near the Ryes’ house to accept them as patients without alerting the entirety of the county before he responded to the Seed. “I mean, that’s a little introspective, y’know? More soul searching for oneself rather than a topic of conversation, but if that’s what you wanna talk about,” he shrugged. “Unless you meant _generally,_ then - “

“Just _kill_ me,” the other groaned petulantly, mostly a whine but Rook could hear the underlying tone of genuine desperation. He was scared, shocked, confused, Rook could see all of it in the color of his eyes. Saw too much of it, his pupils like pin pricks from the intake of harsh sunlight, only leaving him with blue. John must have been searching Rook, too, found something he wasn’t fond of as well if the next shuddering breath he took was anything to go by.

Rook tore his gaze away again so he didn’t have to look at him.

John leaned forward as far as his bonds would allow, the muscles along his shoulders straining from the pull of it. He didn’t seem to care, or maybe everything else pained him much more for him to notice the duller ache of it. “Joseph saw this coming, _all of it_ , no matter what you did - we knew what was coming. If this is the path you’re making, I’m supposed to be dead. Joseph saw it to be so.”

“That’s not - that’s not how the fucking world works.” Rook bit the inside of his cheek, breathed out through his nose; steadied. “He’s not a goddamned oracle or prophet - he’s just a man, how could he know what I would do?” He pulled the truck on a turn without slowing much, the brakes whined and the momentum pressed him against his door. The road was darker, hidden by the trees like Rook had intended, but he still felt cut open and bare for the world to see. The world and John fucking Seed. “I didn’t come here for that,” he confessed. “I was just a replacement for Williams ‘cause he called in sick. I wasn’t even supposed to be here. I never wanted to hurt anybody - never wanted to _kill_ anybody.”

“ _Liar_.” The way John said it, low and on an exhale, made the word come out like a hiss, like a curse. Rook flinched when he heard it, but only slightly. “You came down on our project like a plague. Dozens of our followers lay dead on the street by _your_ hands and you’ve never batted an eye.” He jolted in his seat suddenly and Rook knew it was a subconscious attempt to grab at him, pull at his shoulders until the only thing he could see was John, only hear his voice, only feel the grip, like a vice on his skin. It frustrated him to be held down, so much so that he continued speaking through the grit of his teeth. “ _Never batted an eye_ and yet you still refuse to see. I carved it into you, wrote it across your chest so you would be reminded every,” he took a breath. “Waking,” another one. “Moment.” He let the silence sit between them for a moment, the air in the cab so tense it sat like lead in Rook’s chest. “You still don’t see it,” John whispered finally, then scoffed as if in disbelief, shook his head. “You don’t _care_.”

Rook veered off the road with a violent jerk, the tires kicking up dirt and mud until they finally rolled to a stop. He counted to three, looked at John, looked away, counted again. “I do care. But they - none of these people will stop until I deal with _you._ You and your family.”

“Dealing with us,” John repeated slowly, anger still evident in his voice. “This is dealing with us? Going on the run from my men _and_ your own?” He punctuated himself by jerking his chin at the silenced radio between them. “If you were smart, you would have killed me. My chosen will find us. They’re trained - “

“I know, _I know_.” He sighed and leaned forward to rest his forehead on the steering wheel. “Trained hunters, best of the best, pros at what they do. I fucking know. I’ve seen _Brother Jacob’s_ training grounds.”

When he finally lifted his head after a few more calming moments, he found John still hung forward, strung up by his seatbelt threaded through his coat’s tied up sleeves. He was staring passed Rook, outside his window, somewhere else entirely. It reminded Rook of just hours before, how John had been sat over his hips with a hand running over his bare chest, hot with Rook’s own blood. He spoke about sin then, too, but with the same far away look in his eyes; expression dazed as if he was remembering something he thought he had buried deeper than he had.

“Why am I still alive?” He asked again.

No matter how long he tried to hide it, the answer would never change. Obvious, like a puzzle he’d already solved time and time again, or a knife stuck through his skull. If he were a better man, someone with more worth and sense, Rook would have hesitated. But he wasn’t, so he didn’t. “I want to save you.”

John laughed something ugly, a rasp from his throat that sounded more like a cough. He slumped back in his seat, head thumping against the rest behind it. “I was already saved.”

In order to resist begging the other to understand the insanity in his defense, Rook switched gears and parked the truck so he could curl his fists over his knees. There were layers and layers of trauma and violence and conditioning Rook would have had to dig through to get John to see it. He imagined it would have been akin to hammering through concrete with only his hands. There were just too many _reasons_ for John to be the way he is, but none of them made it right.

Rook heard the rumors of John Duncan when he spent enough time in the valley. It didn’t mean much to him until he found himself strapped to a chair in the man’s bunker. He told Rook about his upbringing, hesitated before he called the people his _parents_ , went on to describe how they had beaten their faith into him until it was all he knew. The wrong faith. Joseph found him, had shown him that. John used prettier words when he recounted the tale, though; a stark contrast to the hand on Rook’s throat. Despite it all, Rook was enamored. And high, for lack of a better term, having just woken up from a Bliss bullet to his thigh. Whatever the reason, he soaked up every word and touch John gave him, leaned into him, never took his eyes off of him. John had noticed that, practically preened from Rook’s devoted attention. Hudson, who had been sat across the room from him, noticed as well. She screamed through her gag like she was begging him to come to his senses, but he hadn’t, not until John had left, dragging her with him.

Sitting in the truck now, Rook wondered if he ever truly  _did_ come to his senses.

He mimicked John’s busted laugh without meaning to. “I think we have different meanings for the word ‘saved’, then.”

John made a noise, almost a groan but cut off short so it was more like a thoughtful hum. “I wish Joseph would’ve just let us kill you all.”

“Yeah,” Rook agreed. They listened to the rumble of the truck’s engine, Rook tapping his fingers along to it. “What the fuck am I going to do?”

“The smart thing,” John suggested. Rook laughed again, because _evidently_ he was not prone to choosing the smart thing and John goddamned Seed was not one to talk. “You have been cleansed in our rivers,” John continued anyway, pointedly ignoring his amusement. “I have exposed you to your sin. All that is left is for you to confess - to accept the Father’s word into your heart. He saw it like he had seen everything else; _you_ , standing in the Garden of our new world.” He was back to staring at Rook with those large, desperate eyes, like all he needed from the world was Rook’s agreement - for him to say yes. “I just need to get you to _see_.”

That night, the night Rook thought back to so many times, where he received his second baptism was when things started making more sense to him regarding the youngest Seed brother. He remembered how immediate John’s muscles had frozen at the sound of the Father’s gentle-voiced scolding. Rook had never torn his eyes off of him, even though they stung from river water and Bliss, just so the image of John shamefaced and _terrified_ would be hard to forget. He was still rigid when his brother brought their foreheads together, maybe even more so then. _This one shall reach the Atonement. Or the Gates of Eden will be shut to you, John_.

The intensity of John’s actions were driven by something deeper than the need to save as many as he could by way of confession, something more personal. Without Rook, there would be no John. He found himself staring at the letters scratched into the other’s chest and wondered if that had anything to do with it. If his sloth was the reason behind it all, as he would perish without the help of others. Maybe John was never clean himself, had yet to reach his own atonement - and Rook was it. To cleanse one would save the other, and together they would walk, side by side, to the supposed end of the world.

He hated that all of their madness started making sense to him. He wished John had just drowned him in that fucking river.

Rook breathed in deep, let it out as a long, suffering sigh that ended with a firm “fuck”.

“I wish you weren’t so fucking crazy,” he said at last.

John didn’t snap back like Rook thought he would. He kept staring, waiting, Rook realized, because it was the first time he didn’t dismiss his long winded speech with a _fuck off_ as his definitive no thank you.

“Deputy?”

Rook returned his gaze back to him, like he always would. All of the Seeds had something magnetic about them, but John always had drawn him in. The bastard knew it, too, smiled something wicked when Rook didn’t look away; manic and large, fucking feral. His eyes were blue, made up of poems Rook wished he knew how to recite so he could put an exact pin on the feeling they gave him. If he had known the words to describe them, maybe it would have grounded him, set him steadier on his feet so it would’ve been harder for John goddamned Seed to knock him off them. He didn’t know them.

Rook was finding he didn’t know much of fucking anything.

**Author's Note:**

> let me know if you found any mistakes :^)


End file.
